Using speaker certainty in word learning

Abstract

To learn the meanings of words, children need to use strategies. Some of these strategies may not concern the possible referents of the word, but the person uttering the word to them. This study proposed a possible strategy: the use of speaker certainty. Speaker certainty is the amount of certainty someone has towards the proposition he is uttering (does he know it is true or just think it is true?). It has already been shown that 4 year old children are able to use speaker certainty in tasks where they have to use directions to find a hidden sticker (Moore et al., 1990, De Mulder, 2011). It also has been shown that children are able to use Theory of Mind in word learning (Happé & Loth, 2002). The present study combines these two facts to investigate a new question: are children able to use speaker certainty in word learning? An experiment in which puppets labeled an unknown object with more or less certainty showed that 4 and 5 year old children performed significantly above chance level in picking the more certain one, and thereby learning a new word. The study also investigated which manners of expressing speaker certainty in language children can use to learn new words. This was done by comparing conditions in which speaker certainty was expressed in different manners (through mental state verbs, in discourse, and in by combining the two). The results showed that there were no significant differences between the conditions, so there are several ways of expressing certainty that children can understand, and use to learn new words .